The year’s first lambs are now huddled together in the Howell Farm sheep barn. In the past week, four mother sheep have given birth to eight lambs. Three of our mothers are still expecting.

Spring at Howell Farm is also the time for plowing. Intern Jake Czaja recently helped plow up the farm’s kitchen garden. It was his first time behind a walking plow.

“Steering was a little bit of a challenge,” Jake reports. “And it was a workout. To plow an entire acre, it’s something you probably have to get used to.”

Jack, an 1,800-pound Belgian draft horse, the farm’s largest, did the pulling. As the dirt in the kitchen garden hadn’t been worked extensively for several years, the farmers used a subsoiler to break up the soil at depths below the level of a traditional walking plow.

“You could actually feel the soil when you’re plowing,” Jake discovered. There was a marked difference between plowing one end of the garden, which is a little rocky, and the other end, where the soil is much softer. The changes in the soil come on quick – the garden is less than 100 feet long.

Jake hopes to use what he learns at Howell Farm this spring to someday start a farm of his own that incorporates draft animal power. Emese Salopek, another intern, also hopes to gain some experience with draft animals. Emese has a Hungarian grandmother in Somerset, New Jersey who has a small farm that grows Hungarian peppers. “One day, down the line in the future, I hope to be able to plow her fields,” Emese says.

After we plow the SOIL in the garden, we wash the dirt off our hands. Don't treat soil like dirt.

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The Furrow is the online newsletter of The Friends of Howell Living History Farm. We will be updating this site about once a week with crop reports and other insights into life on a horse-drawn living history farm.